Part three?

Wow, I just realized that title could sound very forboding. No, this isn’t about another recurrence. But I would like to talk about Austin’s recurrence, in an artistic sense (if recurrences of pediatric cancer can be “artistic”!), and ask your advice.

I’ve been hard at work on my manuscript over the past few weeks in preparation for the Writers’ Digest conference in New York City in January. The weekend includes a pitch slam, where you get 90 seconds to make an individual oral pitch to up to fifty literary agents. I’d like to have my book mostly done by then, so that 1) I can give an accurate summary and word count (which is expected) and 2) I can mail it out the next week on the off-chance that some agent says, “Wonderful! Can’t wait to read it, send me your work asap.”

Now, you may remember that I had written a book, one I was very happy with, after our first round of cancer. It originally checked in at about 250 pages. I then revised to add our almost-recurrence, which I managed to describe in less than 25 pages. I feel like that event is important to the story because, even though it ended up not being a huge deal in terms of Austin’s overall health, it was enormously consequential to me and Mark and how we thought about his disease and all of our futures.

But now I’ve spent weeks struggling with how to include Part Three, the actual recurrence, spanning from our worrisome fall through spring (end of treatment) and even summer (recovery of kidney). The truth is that it is dreadfully boring to write about. Dreadfully. It is repetitive and tedious — the same worries (oh, what should we do with his kidney?), the same procedures (day after day and week after week of platelet transfusions), the same ups and the same downs and ultimately, the same ending.

Now, of course, I am thrilled we got the same ending (a happy one) — that’s all we want, but it doesn’t make for interesting literature. The entire recurrence fails to move the story forward in any way.

That first part is full of drama, especially the mysterious and horrifying growth of his primary tumor, which occurs four weeks and ninety pages in. That is followed by two more dramatic surgeries and then, in perfect climactic fashion, the unexpected clear scan that fall. The story has flow–there’s build-up and mystery and climax and resolution.

The recurrence is just boring. It was boring to live and it’s boring to write (and I’m afraid would be boring to read). Yes, it’s true, it happened, which is why I feel the need to include it. But honest memoir doesn’t mean you have to write about every single thing that’s ever happened to you. There are many reasons I want to include it — it was hugely significant in his life and in all our lives. It mattered.

And yet, it’s boring.

Mark suggested that I just include it as an epilogue, an abbreviated looking-backward kind of essay: overview of what happened, overview of how we felt and feel, overview of where we go from here. That’s it.

14 comments

As I was reading your post and the quandey of how to include the 3rd part, I kept thinking “she should really see if she could do it as an epilogue!” It wouldn’t ruin the flow of the original story but would add the very necessary reoccurance. And besides, stories Luke yours make people very eager for an epilogue – a ” but how are they now?!” answer.
So I agree with Mark.

Me too (Mark and Heather). I think the point is to get the book published. If the publisher/editor wants more (including an epilogue, they will help you sort that out. I’ll compare it to what I tell people about their resumes – it’s not your life story. it’s what someone will read, and want more.

I think a short epilogue-like last chapter along the lines of what Mark describes is a good idea. But I think rather than a blow-by-blow retelling of everything that went on, you should hit the highlights (lowlights?), and in the process, tell about why exactly that last chapter was from a literary standpoint difficult to include. But what does the recurrence mean for your family going forward? How, if at all, do you feel different from when it was all over the last time?

I don’t think you should feel any pressure to make this a comprehensive accounting. If the book (correction, THIS book) was finished after the false recurrence, then let it be done. And of course people will want an epilogue.

Boring?????? I don’t think so. Not for those of us who read each post holding our collective breaths. AGAIN?!…..The anxiety,the fear, the unknowing, the cancer, the kidney, the hair, the unfairness……more experiences like the first discovery yet different.
Sounds like the epilogue has the votes but boring it is not. Maybe just really, really tiring to live through…….again! Others need to know.
Happy bright lights and giggles under the tree.

I think the third part is important. It’s important because people need to understand that cancer is not something you beat one time and then go on from. It can recur, and the recurrence carries similarities and differences. If you emphasize how the recurrence was different than the original situation, and how you had coping skills in place but that it was still a heart rending thing to go through – AGAIN – it won’t be boring or repetitive.

Sure, there were things that were the same, but you weren’t the same, and you weren’t the same as a family, either. Show the continuation of that journey and how your family was changed by the recurrence. How much more heartbreaking was it to have beaten this thing and to think “Hey, we won!!” and then to find out….no, not really. Not yet. Pass on to the reader what it was like to have to slog it out yet again.

Definitely an epilogue. Perfect way to put it out there. Also, I am kind of always late to every party but I have a bag of mini toiletries that I don’t know what to do with. Can you give me an address to send them too? You can do it privately at JBaker@marcusthomasllc.com

Hmmmm – most people are voting for the epilogue, but I think the recurrence is such an integral part of the whole story. I remember so clearly the night I read your post about the first time the doctors wanted to take Austin’s remaining kidney out – and when again they were suggesting taking it out, after the chemo – I remember just tossing and turning all night, thinking about it, and wanting to tell you not to let them do that – keep that kidney and let it go as far as it could; I had the sense it would recover, you just had to give it time. So if I had that reaction, I can only imagine how you and Mark must have been feeling during that tumultuous time – no way that is boring. I understand that the book was already basically completed before the recurrence, so I do get it, adding an epilogue, rather than several new chapters – in some ways it makes sense. But isn’t there a way to compress those new chapters – the recurrence – time travel through it – but still keeping all the raw emotion of it – the decisions that you and Mark had to make, that no parent should ever have to make – and how you all handled it? So what you originally thought was the resolution wasn’t really the resolution at all – not until you got through that recurrence, and now you have your resolution. I don’t know – just a thought – but to me it seems right to add those chapters. But then again, I’m not a book editor …… you have to go with your gut.

Krissy, In my opinion, the most important question to answer is why are you writing this? Once you have answered that question, then you can identify the material that directly addresses your reason for writing. So, I ask you. Are you writing a memoir or an account of a journey that contains only those facts needed to convey a message to the reader? Once you have answered this question and are totally satisfied with the answer, then you can write your story. Just beware, the answer may well cause you to revise that which you have already written. You can look at this task as tiresome or something needed to create the best possible product. Finally, beware of artificial deadlines. The creative product itself should dictate the deadline and not some imaginary literary agent. A good literary agent can identify a product worth printing even in that product’s infancy.

Having scanned the current commentaries, I would like to add a few thoughts.
Since I have not read the manuscript to date, it is impossible to know if that should be edited down.Close to 300 pages of a book seems demanding of a reader not intimately involved in your family’s life…no matter how compelling the story.
The epilogue feels appropriate and a concise way to bring the situation to its present status. That can be very tightly written, like they do at the end of films to inform of facts pertinent to the reader. I feel this is absolutely needed in order not to mislead the reader as to the real situation to date. I also agree with the friend who reminds that putting an arbitrary deadline on completing this task is a false priority. Any interested agent/publisher at that conference will not be listening carefully but will be attracted to your brief telling. (Put your talents into zapping them!) Nobody is expecting a completed document. If you want to produce a concise overview of maybe two pages and have a few copies available, that should be the extent of your efforts for that January gathering.
Do you have personal “business” cards that you can hand to folks? Please take a deep breath, enjoy your family for Christmas and other happy events. Go to that conference in the spirit of an adventure, and then come home to set to work. Be well, go well…love Joanne

I think Terry has hit it on the head — false deadlines are so tempting. You wrote a book that now needs to be a different book which doesn’t need to be finished for the workshop. It’s more work for my dear you, but it’ll be a better telling of his real story.
While I’m at it, I want to share something with the others that I wrote for myself last year at just about this time when Austin’s recurrence was very much on our minds. Here it is. Mom

My little girl … has a little boy … with cancer. That’s how it sounded when I said it aloud to myself. I don’t often say things aloud to myself, but when I thought it, it seemed that it needed to be said aloud. It was much more amazing to hear me say it than to hear me think it. I’m used to thinking it. I’ve been thinking it, and other things like it, for two and a half years. But tonight as I drove by their house — just one block out of my way, lest I have to think myself neurotic — and I glimpsed Krissy in the living room near the stubbornly cheerful Christmas tree with its little white lights, I also thought — and then said aloud as well just to hear it said and real — they’re about to leave … for the hospital. Just like that, as normal as anything — they’re about to leave for the hospital. Isn’t everyone about to leave for the hospital with their three year old at eight o’clock on a Wednesday evening? What else does the average family do after supper? Why of course, you take your three year old to the hospital so that he can choose which of his two arms he can get his IV in this time. I already know — he’s choosing his left so he can have his right free for coloring and whatever other things a three year old can do to keep busy while he’s in the hospital overnight for his CT scan. Sometimes his CT scan is to see if there’s any cancer in his kidney — I say kidney because he only has one — the other one has already been taken out. So he gets a CT scan every three months just to make sure. But this time we already know. We already know there’s a new tumor there — growing on the kidney that he has left, the 60% of a kidney that he has left. This time his CT scan is to see if this new cancer that we already know about has spread to his liver or his lungs. So it feels like a big deal.
Will the nice and friendly scanners greet us enthusiastically as we bring him into his windowless room with its thin scanning bed? Of course they will. They’re like that, nice and friendly and it’s all good. We’ll wait just outside in the room with the magazines. Then minutes later when they’re through, will they wave us off in all their hardiness or will they quietly say good bye as if it’s all their fault, as if the shadows that they saw in the little body are somehow their fault and they can’t be hardy and enthusiastic anymore. Just like they were that first time when the scan showed that the cancer was on two kidneys instead of just the one. We’ve become quite good at reading the signals that everyone in the hospital tries hard not to give.
He was at my house today having pancakes for lunch and trying out all the Hot Wheels vehicles to find one that would do a perfect loop-the-loop on the new plastic track set up on my dining room rug. In between he jumped on the couch and slid in sock feet across the kitchen floor. He knew tonight was a hospital night. It was fine with him because there are toys there and he would get to sleep in the same room with Mommy and he could have a corn dog for supper when it was over. Daddy would stay home with big brother so the morning kindergarten routine would go on without a hitch. Nothing out of the ordinary, right? Just a little check to see if the cancer’s spread.